Jan Anward
Doing
language
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Department of Culture and Communication Division of Language and Culture
Linköping University SE-581 83 Linköping Sweden
Jan Anward Doing Language
Edition 2 includes an introduction by Per Linell, as well as minor changes suggested by Jan Anward’s close colleagues and approved by him. © Jan Anward
Department of Culture and Communication 2019 ISBN 978-91-7685-047-3
ISSN 1403-2570
Cover image: Ulrika Broman: Samtal pågår. By kind permission of the artist.
Jan Anward (1947-2016) completed Doing Language during the last year of his life, when he was fatally ill, although still completely intellectually vital. He wrote the booklet in a succinct and compact, literary and part-ly aphoristic style that was characteristic of most of his oeuvre. Such a parlance, however, might not necessarily be immediately and altogether accessible, not even for those who do share his points-of-view in advance, and I therefore suggested to him that he might need to write an introduc-tion to his treatise. However, under the given circumstances he did not seem to have the strength to do so, although apparently he would not have anything against me or someone else trying to do it.1 Accordingly, in this short introduction I have brought up a few assumptions behind his work which I would like to make somewhat more explicit, in a subjective man-ner of my own of course, yet I think one that was largely shared by Jan.
Jan Anward´s basic interest is as simple as it is ambitious. He wants to account for the connections between the language system and the situated and socially contexted practices of people´s languaging in, for exam-ple, mundane conversations. (Jan prefers the term ”doing language” to ”languaging” (but cf. p. 121), and of course to ”language usage”.) What do people do when they spontaneously bring communicative content into language in the divergent situations of human life, and how do they do it? In other words, what does ”doing language” involve?
The fundamental perspective of doing language means that units and rules of some abstract language systems are not simply deployed, ”used” or applied by people as they speak or listen, write or read. Participants´ primary activities do not consist in applying ready-made units and rules. Such a perspective, not seldom naively propounded, or at least tacitly assumed, by linguists in their conventional accounts, would not do justice 1 Indeed, he conceded to a group of people including Leelo Keevallik, Angelika Linke and myself to write a short introduction and to make some – mainly technical – editorial changes in the text. I thank Leelo and Angelika for their useful comments on this introduc-tion.
not assign any significant agency to participants (cf. Linell, 2015).
In Doing Language Jan takes his point of departure in dialogue, i.e., in interactions in which participants communicate in and through language by taking turns at talk. (In this context, he takes the term dialogue in a fairly concrete sense, rather than referring to some very general ability to make sense together.) The basic function of a conversation is, he (p. 123) tells us, that of updating a current social scene, whether real or imaginary. When infants use sounds, gazes, gestures, etc. to take part in dialogue, and in their own and carers´ vocalisations, they learn to recognise recur-rent patterns, in terms of utterances, grammatical structures, intonational phrases and contextual meanings. Infants´ utterances are holophrastic, semantically unarticulated and intonationally continuous from the start (p. 98); with time they become more analytic.
In dialogue parties take turns at speaking and listening. Participants build upon prior utterances and modify and renew these in a cooperative manner. Such ”recycling with différance” – Jan´s central concept and favourite term (e.g., p. 21, 85) – means that grammatical structures and relations unfold and become varied when people use partly the same words, but do this in slightly changed ways because they need coherence backwards to prior talk and progression forwards (carrying on and devel-oping dialogue), rather than just repeating things in their communicative exchanges. Conversations evolve on the basis of turn-taking, sequence organisation, and repair, the three classical interactional resources high-lighted in Conversation Analysis (Schegloff, 2007). But Jan adds a fourth resource, that is, ”recycling with différance” (or in Du Bois´s, 2014, terminology: resonance with adjacent utterances).
When participants use ”recycling with différance” their interactions will provide and stabilise interactional routines. But that is only one side of it. They will also accomplish systems of language with internal para-digmatic and syntagmatic relations. ”Speakers continuously negotiate the analyzability of linguistic resources, as well as expand both paradigms
interactions. On this point Jan Anward goes much further than main-stream conversation and interaction analyses, which normally have little to say about the emergence of language systems. In actual languaging, we ”update” both traditions and local contexts, both interaction routines and language.
Constructions are reused in particular conversations, but above all, the utterance patterns are supported by constructions that have emerged in previous conversations.We learn to recognise (partly abstract) relations between utterance types, as we ”transform” utterances to related forms of utterances. For example, we develop an understandings of regular relations between verbs and nominalisations, assertions and questions, straight and cleft sentences, main and subjunctive clauses, etc. ”Recy-cling with différance” works when people inflect the same words as appeared just before, when they derive new words from old words (p. 68), when they extend the meanings of a word already used, when they build assonances in their joint discourse. Such – still concrete – knowledge of language arguably develops not only by everyday doing of language but also from metalinguistic activities, talk about language (we educate our offspring by various instructions; Taylor, 2013), and the development of literacy skills. As Jan points out, we continue to modify and learn our language throughout our lifetime.
Naturally, as situations develop, there will be a need for partly new linguistic expressions. At the same time, as people move between situ-ations, they create routines of using same or similar resources for partly new purposes. Their linguistic and other semiotic practices give rise to structures at two levels, in specific situations in which participants elabo-rate their current communicative projects, and in traditions that transcend situations. Traditions comprise the voices of a largely anonymous com-munity of predecessors (cf. p. 18). Progression at these two planes take place simultaneously, in and through the same interactions. (This is what Linell, 2009, has termed the ”double dialogicality” of interactions.)
Prac-by repeated use (routine from French route ”pathway”). Jan illustrates this way of ”doing tradition” (p. 8f) by using examples from particular, situated conversations, but it is important that the creation of routines will simultaneously lead to – precisely – traditions. Yet, his reference to emer-gent structures in examples of situated discourse might perhaps obscure the fact that these structures are arguably re-emergent (rather than emer-gent ab novo), as they have already become available to participants from their experience of situations and traditions prior to the examples (p. 118). Jan cites a large number of linguist predecessors, but seems particularly determined to bring out the ideas of Karcevski (1929), Saussure´s succes-sor in Geneva, and his dynamic system of language based on languaging (parole) (p. 35).
The above-mentioned argument implies that repeated occasions of interaction creates both traditions of interaction and language systems (p. 20ff). If we see things this way, it may seem somewhat paradoxical that ”speaking” is described as ”independent of language” (p. 121) that ”is ap-propriated in languaging”; ”speaking is the iteration of syllables, grouped into intonation units”, and ”speaking precedes language” (p. 55). But as routines and structures of speaking get sedimented, they ”structure inter-action towards a language” (p. 33, 55, 98). Having been confronted with ample evidence of speaking, infants no longer hear speech as unstructured vocalisations or nonsensical gibberish but as recognisable and meaningful utterances; in fact, they cannot help hearing them as meaningful, when they have acquired such a ”language stance” (Cowley, 2011). While the independence of language from speaking may be true of an evolution-ary perspective (how language once evolved out of pre-linguistic and pre-semiotic practices deployed by hominids before homo sapiens), when modern infants encounter conspecifics ”doing language” they are, with Heidegger´s term, ”thrown into” activities imbued with language (and of-ten treated by adults as if they understood more of this than they actually do). So it seems disputable that the original evolution of language can be
Jan creates a sophisticated account of language and doing language, and of situations and traditions, by working his way from dialogue and turn-taking to recycling and adopting routines from others. This may seem self-evident to many readers of his text, but we must not forget that linguists have often simply posited quite abstract units and rules that par-ticipants putatively apply and ”use” despite being completely unaware of them. Jan remarks that ”[l]anguage is […] not made once and for all and then used; rather it keeps on being done. And, of course, what is being done on one occasion may well reproduce what has been done on previ-ous occasions” (2014: 54). Knowing a language is not primarily about having knowledge of an abstract system; it is about the practical mastery of interaction formats that offer potentialities of meaning (on avoiding ”meaning-blindness”, see p. 77).
Jan Anward seems ambivalent to structures and structuralism. Or one could say that he was a moderate structuralist. Sometimes, he was in-clined to use formalisations, something which may have to do with the fact that he studied mathematics at college (the Swedish gymnasium) and started his academic life in theoretical philosophy. Yet, formalisation of (some) regularities was for him not paramount to claiming that language is a formal object. At times, however, he proposed unnecessarily struc-turally complex explanations (as in his suggestion for VP pronominalisa-tion, pp. 111-115). But at the same time, he was relatively sympathetic to exemplar theory, the assumption that new utterances were being modelled on prior concrete examples, rather than more abstract grammatical ac-counts.2 Competence, he says, cannot be regarded as something ”extract-ed” from linguistic practices; he thinks that competence is the ”sum of practices” (p. 24). Yet, such a formulation may be compatible with a no-tion of practice that involves some extracno-tion (or abstracno-tion). This seems inherent in his account of how participants build interaction formats, con-2 Here, we held slightly different views, it seems. I look upon myself as a moderate struc-turalist too, but for marginally different reasons.
(p. 64). Another example is the emergence of grammatical persons (i.e. 1., 2., 3.) and predicate-argument structures which are ”grounded in the very structure of interaction” (p. 93).
Jan closes his text by stating that he has ”tried to inflict as little harm as possible to systems of linguistic resources actually done in conversa-tions” (p. 124). This, I believe, is a way of saying that he sees the task of linguistics to describe and explain language and languages as they are ”actually done” in real life. Yet, linguists have often applied quite ab-stract points-of-view, with ”[des] regards éloignés” (p. 73) on linguistic phenomena. And indeed, ”structures” are, almost by definition, abstract, as Jan himself demonstrates. But we want to understand structures as contained in actual utterances (or texts), not as representations far re-moved from ”surface language” (seeing manifest structures as related to distant underlying representations by long ”derivations”). Structuralism and hyperstructuralism (i.e., Chomskyanism) adopted particularly ab-stract pictures of language, while Doing Language calls for an account of language that is more substantialist, although with a recognition of some patterns or structures (Anward & Linell, 2016).
Jan Anward sometimes mentions that language should be seen as ”an open secret” (Anward, 2014; Doing Language: p. v, 124). ”Secret” seems to mean that there is something obvious that we cannot easily see. The ways in which language has been portrayed by linguists may have obscured our minds. Yet, Jan never explains in so many words what he thinks the secret is. One answer might be the following. Language is not a mystery for us, when we learn to ”do” it in everyday life. If we start from observations of how we ”do language” in dialogue, in particular in conversations, it should become open to us. Language is at least not an abstract hidden structure.
April 2016 Per Linell
Anward, Jan. 1983. Språkbruk och språkutveckling i skolan. Lund: Liber. Anward, Jan. 2014. Dialogue and tradition: The open secret of language.
In Günthner, S., Imo, W. & Bücker, J. (Eds.), Grammar and Dialo-gism: Sequential, syntactic, and prosodic patterns between emergence and sedimentation. Berlin: de Gruyter. 53-76.
Anward, Jan & Linell, Per. 2016. On the grammar of utterances: Putting the form vs. substance distinction back on its feet. Acta Linguistica Hafniensia, 48:1: 35-58.
Cowley, Stephen. 2011. Taking a language stance. Ecological Psychology, 23: 185-209.
Du Bois, John. 2014. Towards a Dialogic Syntax. Cognitive Linguistics, 25: 359-410.
Karcevski, S. 1929. Du dualisme asymétrique du signe linguistique. Re-printed in J. Vachek (Ed.) (1964), A Prague School Reader in Linguis-tics. Bloomington, IN: Indiana University Press.
Linell, Per. 2009. Rethinking Language, Mind and World Dialogically: Interactional and contextual theories of human sense-making. Char-lotte, NC: Information Age Publishing.
Linell, Per. 2015. On agency in situated languaging: Participatory agency and competing approaches. New Ideas in Psychology. 42: 39-45. Linell, Per. 2016. Theories of dialogicality, dialogue and interaction:
Con-troversies on language and beyond. To be submitted to Weigand, E. & Kecsces, I. (Eds.) (Forthc.), From Pragmatics to Dialogue. Amster-dam: John Benjamins.
Schegloff, E.A. 2007. Sequence Organization in Interaction. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
Taylor, Talbot. 2013. Calibrating the child for language: Meredith Wil-liams on a Wittgensteinian approach to language socialization. Lan-guage Sciences, 40: 308-320.
In this book, I will be concerned with two things.
First, I will demonstrate how people in conversation (and other forms of communicative practices) on-line construct working, and re-usable, systems of linguistic resources, through turn-taking and a method of turn construction (recycling with différance), which together structure material at hand - syllables and intonation units - towards a language (to combine formulations by Cassirer 1994 and Lacan 1977).
Secondly, I will explore a number of properties of such systems, in particular their character of embedded and dynamic systems, solidly entrenched in space, time, and social relations.
Some of the material in this book has appeared in earlier works of mine, notably 2004, 2005a, 2005b, 2006, 2011, 2014a, and 2014b. But both the details and the wholeness are new here.
This book has been on its way for a while. On this way, I have benefitted from the supporting environment of the Graduate School in Language and Culture in Europe at Linköping University, collaboration with Universität Potsdam and Universität Zürich, participation in the two conferences on Interactional Linguistics in Spa 2000 and Kallvik 2002, and useful comments from audiences in Helsinki, Linköping, Münster, and Neuchâtel. A special thanks to Björn Lindblom, who taught me about deriving language from non-language, and to Auli Hakulinen, Lars Fant, Jack Du Bois, Paul Hopper, Chuck Goodwin, Lorenza Mondada, Susanne Günthner, and Angelika Linke. My greatest debt is to Per Linell, friend and discussion partner for almost fifty years. Where would we have been without each other?
Studies in Language and Culture, to Anna-Lena Nilsson for fixing the references, and to Chibi Anward for formatting and layout.
One: Framework 1
Two: Doing tradition 8
Three: And doing language 20
Four: An emergent and dynamic system 31
Five: Of formats, stance, and rhemes 36
Six: Of speaking and nonsense 55
Seven: Interaction formats 59
Eight: Le regard éloigné 73
Nine: Structure 81
Ten: Tradition 101
Eleven: Summa 121
References 126
Transcript conventions 145
such as (1),
(1) i ask him if he- (0.4) could- if you could call him
linguistic units and relations are not merely 'used' to achieve interactional goals, but are actually produced, 'done'2, in the process of achieving such goals.
In the repair in (1), the speaker thus articulates i ask him if he- (0.4) could- into two successive units: i ask him and if he- (0.4) could-, then produces an alternative to the second unit: if you could, and finally continues with a further unit: call him.
Here, I will generalize Goodwin’s observation, and argue that an embedded and dynamic system of linguistic resources is continuously emerging in a tradition of conversations, and that the very methods which participants use to structure conversation - turn-taking, sequence organization, and repair (Schegloff 2006) - also structure conversation towards a language (to borrow a formulation from Lacan 1977).
The inherent organization of conversation is the open secret of linguistic structure.
1 See also Goodwin 2006: 100-103. 2 In the sense of Sacks (1992).
O
neFramework
Conversation is grounded in a natural attitude of humans, a dialogical attitude (Linell 2009), which compels humans to hear a sound as an address and an aboutness, to answer an address with a returned address and a continued aboutness, and to assume that other humans work in the same way as you do.
Participants informed by a dialogical attitude will accomplish conversations where they take turns at dialogical actions, which are relevant to preceding dialogical actions, make further dialogical actions relevant, and serve to affect participants and relations within the ongoing social activity.
Turn-taking
The first kind of structuring of a conversation done by its participants is then an obvious one. A conversation is structured as a sequence of turns at talk (Sacks, Schegloff & Jefferson 1974).
Let us listen to the first four turns of a land-line phone call1. Eva calls a neighbour in a practical matter. Bodil, a young girl who is visiting the neighbours’ house to play with their daughter Veronika, answers the phone. (1) Pippiperuk 1
1. ((four signals))
2. Bodil: >sex sju två fyra¿< six seven two four
3. Eva: >hej de e E:va. hi it is Eva
hi this is Eva
4. har du mamma hemma¿< have thou mammy home
is your mother at home
5. Bodil: näe:. noo:
The first two turns of (3) are a classical example of an adjacency pair (Schegloff & Sacks 1973, Schegloff 2007), where, in the analysis of Schegloff (1968), a first action, a summons (line 1), makes a second action, an answer (line 2), relevant, and where the pair as a whole makes further talk relevant. The answer to the summons is not just any answer, though, but an identification, which is accomplished through recital of a telephone number2, and this identification, in its turn, makes a second identification relevant. The second identification, by first name this time, follows in the third turn (line 3), and it is preceded by a greeting, which makes a second greeting relevant. However, Eva does not wait for a second greeting. Instead, 2 For a discussion of this type of identication, in a comparative perspective, see Lindström (1994).
she asks Bodil to pass on the phone call to an adult, thereby deferring the second greeting by means of an inserted question.
In accomplishing this small stretch of interaction, Eva and Bodil also jointly produce a one-dimensional linguistic system, shown below with no further articulation than intonation units. Their unfolding responsory of dialogical actions simultaneously unfolds a system of syntagmatically related intonation units and turns, where each intonation unit is demarcated by a contour, and each turn is demarcated by a change in voice.
1. ((four signals)) 2. Bodil: >sexsjutvåfyra¿< 3. Eva: >hejdeee:va. 4. hardumammahemma¿< 5. Bodil: näe:. An embedded system
Producing differences is in the nature of dialogue. For the dialogical attitude to recognize its own workings, responses and participants must be discernible. A response to an action A needs to be both relevant to A and different from A, and thus project a further response which is still relevant to A but could not have been a direct response to A. Moreover, contributions by one particular participant need to be both relevant to and different from contributions by other participants, indexing that participant’s unique position and perspective relative to the other participants (Bakhtin 1986, Clark & Holquist 1984, ch. 3).
A conversation, then, produces a network of differentially voiced and authored actions, within an evolving tension and collaboration between at least two ‘contextures’ (Mukařovský 1977: 87), distinct perspectives on the topics talked about.
And these actions serve to update the ongoing social activity, by introducing participants and relations among those participants into
the activity and maintaining them there (Gardiner 1951, Ballmer 1972, Karttunen 1976, Anward 1980, and many others). Some of these participants and relations are physically present in the activity (‘real’), while others are only symbolically present, i.e. they enter the activity only through linguistic expressions, and still others are both physically and symbolically present in the activity.
To use a vivid metaphor from the artistic field: in Magritte’s painting ‘The apparition’ (1928), we find quite a precise picture of a social activity peopled by both physically present and symbolically present participants: a wanderer and a number of embodied words: fusil, nuage, fauteuil, horizon, and cheval.
In the second turn of Pippiperuk 1, repeated below,
2. Bodil: >sex sju två fyra¿< six seven two four
Bodil introduces herself as a participant in the social activity of the phone call, physically present through her voice. She also introduces another participant by directly addressing her. And finally, she introduces herself as a symbolically present participant, as well, through the telephone number she uses to identify herself.3
Symbolically present participants and relations are typically, and reasonably, taken to be in a separate location from where conversationalists are. That location is often assumed to be some kind of mental space (Fauconnier 1994, Fauconnier & Turner 2002). However, that installs too great a divide between real and symbolic participants. Turns at talk are definitely material (if short-lived) components of social activities, and participants they serve to introduce and maintain may very well both speak and gesture (Günthner 1998, Anward 2002). I therefore prefer to locate symbolically present participants and relations in that intermediate space of 3 See Haiman (1998) for an extensive discussion of this kind of speaker doubling.
human activity, which Winnicott (1971, chs. 7 and 8) argues is the location of cultural experience and play. In that space, which is “neither … inner psychic reality nor … external reality” (Winnicott 2005 [1971]: 129), turns and turn parts are participants and relations, just as a broom can be a horse, and a button, a diamond, when we are playing.
In this way, the system above, and, à fortiori, all systems produced in conversation, are inextricably embedded in their ongoing social activities.
We can display this crucial embeddedness in an extended transcription4, where not only turns at talk (and other semiotic resources) are included, but also participants, and relations between participants, both real and symbolic, effected by these turns at talk.
Let us transcribe line 2 in the following way:
The outer rectangle depicts an entire conversational scene, including its participants (1, 2, …), a space (m; inside the inner rectangle), where symbolic relations are managed, and a sequence of turns (<2,1>, …), through which relations and participants are introduced and manipulated.
What we have here are then two physically present participants (1 and 2), one of which (2) is also symbolically present, in the intermediate space m, where she is identified as sexsjutvåfyra, through a turn by herself, directed at the other participant (<2,1>), where the first number indicates the speaker and the second the addressee.
An extended transcription of the four turns we have been listening to would look like this, reflecting an interpretation where the second turn and 4 Inspired by Discourse Representation Theory (Kamp & Reyle 1993, Geurts & Beaver 2011).
1 2 m:
<2,1> sexsjutvåfyra (2)
the second intonation unit of the third turn are about 2 (Bodil), while the first intonation unit of the third turn is about 1 (Eva).
1 2 m: <1,2> <2,1> <1,2> <1,2> <2,1> ((four signals)) sexsjutvåfyra (2) >hejdeee:va.(1) hardumammahemma¿< (2) näe:. 1 2
A look ahead
In chapters 2 through 8, I will be concerned with demonstrating how turns in conversation are designed to situate their speakers, addressees, and topics within the social activities in which they are embedded. This involves designing turns relative to a dynamic social organization of a complex interactional space (of the kind shown above) and a relevant tradition. And I will argue that it is precisely this design of turns that allows an embedded and dynamic system of linguistic resources to emerge in conversation.
In chapters 2 through to 4, I will demonstrate how conversationalists can orient to a tradition in which they speak, and how, in doing so, they use a method of turn construction, recycling with différance, which, together with turn-taking, structures conversation towards a language.
In chapter 5 to 8, I will, through an analysis of a conversational sequence where participants co-operate to make sense of a strange object in the room where they are gathered, explore in more detail the kind of embedded linguistic systems, what I will call interaction formats, which emerge from turn-taking and recycling with différance, and how such systems can be used.
In chapter 9 and 10, I will return to the phone call between Eva and Bodil, and use this to demonstrate how interaction formats can be launched from scratch, and then stabilized and elaborated when recycled in a tradition.
T
wODoing tradition
Participation in any form of languaging requires access to a tradition (Becker 1995), to a common history of negotiated meanings, which offers not just words and constructions as resources for further meaning-making but also, and perhaps even more importantly, a complex system of set phrases, dead and not so dead metaphors, ways of speaking, quotations, proverbs, folk theories, and figured worlds (Gee 2011).
Consider the following example (Walker & Adelman 1976: 138-139). “… quite a lot of the things the class found very funny, we did not ‘get’. We had to ask people afterwards what the joke was. For example, one lesson the teacher was listening to the boys read through short essays that they had written for homework on the subject of ‘Prisons’. After one boy, Wilson, had finished reading out his rather obviously skimped piece of work the teacher sighed and said, rather crossly:
T[eacher]: Wilson, we’ll have to put you away if you don’t change your ways and do your homework. Is that all you’ve done?
B[oys]: Strawberries, strawberries. (Laughter)
When we asked why this was funny, we were told that one of the teacher’s favourite expressions was that their work was ‘Like strawberries - good as far as it goes, but it doesn’t last nearly long enough’.”
It is this kind of built-in and continuously reproduced and renewed history which make linguistic resources efficient tools for everyday meaning-making, enabling complexity and depth of meaning to be achieved quickly and effortlessly in self-evident ways.
In addition, as Walker and Adelman note, a tradition serves as an efficient means of exclusion, inclusion, and identification. A group which shares a tradition knows how to tell insiders from outsiders. If you, like Walker and Adelman, are not part of the tradition, you can not participate fully in what goes on, and you are therefore identifiable as an outsider, both by the group and by yourself.
Aktiv å passiv
In every conversation, then, a tradition is present. Often it is only indexed by the resources which participants choose to use, but sometimes the tradition is focussed and made relevant to the ongoing conversation. I will now turn to such a case. My example is taken from one of the conversations recorded within the project Talsyntax (Syntax of spoken Swedish) 1.
Four physicians, one woman (Clara) and three men (Arne, Björn, and Daniel), who know each other, have volunteered to participate in a formal discussion of euthanasia. An hour before the discussion session will start, they have gathered to plan the discussion. About five minutes into the planning session, following some talk about who in the public debate has said what about euthanasia, Arne, who has the floor, makes a topic shift, and introduces a piece of relevant information about euthanasia, in lines 1 - 3 of (1) below, and, after that, a small discussion ensues.
I have refrained from translating response particles and epistemic stance particles in (1), in order not to short-circuit the analysis to be presented. Their meaning will become clear as we proceed through (1), turn by turn. Suffice it to say, at this point, that mm is a minimal response, that Swedish, like French, has a system of three basic response items (SAG 2: 752):
Positive formulation Negative formulation
Agreeing response ja nä
Disagreeing response nä jo
that these items can be elaborated in various ways, and that speakers of Swedish also have access to a sizable repertoire of epistemic stance particles, including ju, nog, and väl.
(1) Aktiv å passiv
1. Arne: sen e ja eh: then am I eh
2. sen e där ju hela eutanasiproblemet sönderfaller ju som (p) then is there ju the-whole euthanasia problem falls-apart ju as
3. som ni vet i två begrepp nämligen aktiv å passiv eutanasi också ju.
as you know into two notions namely active and passive euthanasia also ju 4. Björn: jaha.
5. Clara: mm (p)
6. Björn: medveten å omedveten. (p) intended and unintended2
7. Arne: näej aktiv e de där förstår du att du helt enkelt slår ihjäl [folk.]
näej active is that you see that you simply kill people 8. Clara: [gör] fel. ((skrattar))
do wrong
9. Arne: på ett eller annat sätt [passiv e bara att du skiter i dom] in one or another way passive is only that you don’t-care about them
10. Björn: [( ) ja 11. Clara: ja
12. Björn: ja ja jo [men
13. Arne: [så de å de e även där e de ju väldit mycke, so it and it is even there is it ju very much
14. Daniel: de aktiva e att stänga droppe. (p) the active is to shut-off the-drip
15. de passiva att aldrig sätta (.) [in droppe.] the passive is to never set in the-drip
16. Arne: [just precis de.] 17. Clara: jaha just de ja [mm
18. Arne: [just precis de.
2 The translation of (o)medveten is not straightforward. A literal translation of medveten would be ‘conscious’. However, in this context, medveten strongly implicates intent, as well. Hence, I have translated medveten as ‘intended’.
Invocation
You can speak in a tradition simply by choosing linguistic resources that belong there and use them according to that tradition. But Arne does more than that in his first turn in (1).
At least two strands of the conversation-so-far come together in this turn. First, there has been talk of which medical problems are worthy of discussion, and consensus has been established that there are no bigger problems than euthanasia. Secondly, Daniel, who is going to be the moderator of the following formal discussion, has inititated a co-constructed definition of euthanasia:
(2) Dödshjälp
1. Daniel: nu e de så att eutanasi e väl samma som dödshjälp. now is that so that euthanasia is väl same as death-help
2. e de inte så va, is that no so eh 3. Arne: joo
4. Daniel: dödshjälp e de inte de, death-help is that not that 5. Arne: mm
6. Daniel: hjälp (p) help 7. Clara: m
Through väl3 in line 1, Daniel solicits agreement from the other participants. He then repeats his request in line 2, through a negative question. In line 3, Arne agrees with Daniel’s proposed definition in line 1, by producing a strenghtened4 positive response to the negative question. Daniel then repeats his definition and request for agreement twice, in lines 4 and 6, and receives minimal responses from Arne and Clara.
It is against this background in the conversation-so-far that Arne 4 jo is strengthened to joo through lengthening of the vowel.
introduces the distinction in the first turn of (1). Let us look at how he does it. Here is Arnes’s first turn again, broken down into smaller pieces: (3) Aktiv å passiv, turn 1
2. Arne: sen e ja eh: then am I eh 2a. sen e där ju then is there ju
2b. hela eutanasiproblemet sönderfaller ju the-whole euthanasia problem falls-apart ju
2b. som (p) as
3a. som ni vet i två begrepp as you know into two notions
3b. nämligen aktiv å passiv eutanasi också ju. namely active and passive euthanasia also ju
Arne’s first turn beginning (sen e ja eh:) is aborted, and then partially recycled (Schegloff 1987), as sen e där ju, effecting a first step towards a topic shift. The new turn beginning is then developed into an apo koinou (Norén 2007), with hela eutanasiproblemet as pivot, through which Arne reintroduces the euthanasia problem as topic, and proceeds to introduce a distinction between active and passive euthanasia, which is established in two steps, lines 3a and 3b.
Note now that every step in this procedure, from line 2a on, is flagged by a marker of common ground. There is an explicit som ni vet (as you-PL know) in line 3a, and a ju, a particle which marks precisely shared knowledge, common ground (Lindström 2008: 95-99), at the end of lines 2a, 2b, and 3b.
Thus, Arne carefully marks the distinction that he is making available to the ongoing conversation as something which is already at hand in the tradition in which they are speaking, as an established resource within this group of professionals, physicians who routinley speak of life and death. In other words, his turn is overtly designed to invoke that tradition.
In more technical terms (Heritage 2013, Mondada 2013), Arne takes care to display overtly in his turn that the epistemic status of all participants with respect to what he is affirming is that they already share this knowledge, because they are all part of a tradition where that knowledge is at hand.
And there is of course a point in doing that. Although the participants know each other, they have never before met in this constellation for a professional discussion of euthanasia. Hence, there is good reason for the participants to calibrate their common ground. And as we will see, this calibration turns out not to be entirely straightforward.
Censorship
A tradition makes, as I have already said, certain things easily and self-evidently sayable. It also makes other things unsayable. What Althusser (1971) and Bourdieu (1987, 1992) describe as censorship, imminent in every social activity, is the other side of efficient meaning-making. In any tradition, certain ‘choices’ have already been made, and ‘incorrect’ meanings (usages) are unavailable to its bearers. And if such choices nevertheless surface, they must be repressed.
This kind of repression becomes visible in the piece of conversation we are looking at. Arne’s turn in lines 1 - 3 is followed by a news receipt5 from Björn, in line 4, and a minimal response from Clara, in line 5.
4. Björn: jaha. 5. Clara: mm (p)
Then Björn, in line 6, sets out to back up Arne’s distinction by wording it 5 A response item with a pre-aspirated reduplicated vowel, such as jaha, indicates that what is responded to is already known. Thus, when such a response item is used to signal agreement, as in line 4, its meaning approximates that of a news receipt item (Heritage 1984).
in yet another way.
6. Björn: medveten å omedveten. (p)
In doing this, Björn uses Arne’s preceding turn as a resource, verbalizing only his own reformulation of Arne’s distinction and retaining, implicitly, the overall format of Arne’s turn. In diagraph format (Du Bois 2014), where successive turns are analyzed into recurring equivalent units, placed in the same column, line 6 is, as shown below, straightforwardly analyzable as a combination of (at least) hela eutanasiproblemet sönderfaller ju som (p) som ni vet i två begrepp nämligen and medveten å omedveten, supporting an interpretation of line 6 as effectively proposing ‘the whole euthanasia problem falls apart as you know into two concepts namely intended and unintended euthanasia’.
1. Arne: sen e ja eh: sen e där ju
hela eutanasiproblemet… i två begrepp
aktiv å passiv eutanasi också ju. …
6. Björn: medveten å omedveten.(p)
However, this attempted backup is emphatically rejected by Arne as something unsayable in the tradition in which they are speaking:
7. Arne: näej aktiv e de där förstår du att du helt enkelt slår ihjäl [folk.]
näej6 active is that you see that you simply kill people
Initiation
Had Arne only said näej in line 7, not only Björn’s turn but also Björn himself would have been excluded from the ongoing conversation.
Remember that a tradition helps making not only meaning but also identity. Speaking outside a tradition means placing oneself outside the group and activity that engage that tradition.
However, Arne chooses not to exclude Björn. Instead, he starts explaining the distinction he is after, thus initiating Björn into the tradition that is being opened up for further use.
7. Arne: näej aktiv e de där förstår du att du helt enkelt slår ihjäl [folk.]
näej active is that you see that you simply kill people 8. Clara: [gör] fel. ((skrattar))
do wrong
9. Arne: på ett eller annat sätt [passiv e bara att du skiter i dom] in one or another way passive is only that you don’t-care about them
10. Björn: [( ) ja 11. Clara: ja
Arne’s explanation, which is overtly marked as an initiation, through förstår du (you see), is however not unproblematic. In line 12, Björn protests against being treated as ignorant by Arne, and by Clara, who backs up Arne, thereby showing that she, too, knows the tradition in which they are speaking. But Björn’s protest has no effect. Instead, it is followed by more explanation. After an attempted wrapping up by Arne in line 13,
12. Björn: ja ja jo [men
13. Arne: [så de å de e även där e de ju väldit mycke, so it and it is even there is it ju very much
Daniel takes over, and produces another version of Arne’s explanation, in lines 14 and 15.
14. Daniel: de aktiva e att stänga droppe. (p) the active is to shut-off the-drip
15. de passiva att aldrig sätta (.) [in droppe.] the passive is to never set in the-drip
In producing this new version of Björn’s explanation, Daniel is recycling the format of that explanation, a format which is also used as a resource by Clara in her back-up of Arne in line 8.
(4) Aktiv å passiv, recycling of line 7
Arne: aktiv e dedär att du helt enkelt slår ihjäl folk Clara: gör fel Arne: passiv e bara att du skiter i dom Daniel: de aktiva e att stänga droppe Daniel: de passiva att aldrig sätta in
droppe
Daniel is then enthusiastically supported by Arne and Clara, in lines 16 - 18.
16. Arne: [just precis de.] 17. Clara: jaha just de ja [mm
18. Arne: [just precis de.
The phrase just de and its elaborated variant just precis de mean literally ‘just that’, and ‘just precisely that’, respectively. They are strong means of indicating complete agreement, both with a previous speaker, and with common ground. In Clara’s turn in line 17, the common ground element is further strengthened by an initial jaha (see fn. 6) and a final ja.
As I have argued in Anward (1997), the repeated just precis de in line 18 is not just a closing down of the preceding sequence, but also an instance of text talk, a formulation (Heritage & Watson 1979, 1980) of the sequence, which can be used in the future as a memo of what was achieved in it.
Arne, Clara and Daniel have then accomplished several things. They have defended the tradition invoked by Arne, they have initiated Björn into that tradition, they have shown themselves to be bearers of that tradition, and they have achieved a significant bonding among themselves through the shared use of an explanatory turn format.
Interpretation
By using clearly deliberate actions to define both active and passive euthanasia, Arne shows that euthanasia can only be intended and hence, that Björn’s proposed reformulation is not only incorrect but also unsayable in the tradition in which they are speaking: it does not make sense to affirm or deny intended use of euthanasia7. Rather, the intended nature of euthanasia belongs to the background in the ongoing tradition, to that on which all meaning-making in the tradition must build.
In order to make this hearable to Björn, Arne phrases his examples in a distinctly non-medical vocabulary: slår ihjäl folk (hit to-death people, literally) and skiter i dom (don’t give a shit about them, roughly). This is by no means the voice of the life-world as opposed to the voice of medicine (Mishler 1984), but rather a collegial jargon. And this collegial jargon does two things. First, it includes Björn in the group, by treating him as an ignorant colleague and not as an unknowing layperson. Secondly, it provides an interpreting code (Benveniste 1974) for the medical tradition which Björn is being initiated into, a register into which medical terminology can be translated in order to be understood. Thus, the tradition we are listening 7 For this notion of unsayable, see Wittgenstein 1922, and also Stenlund 1980.
to is based on heteroglossia (Bakhtin 1981), on a symbiosis between two registers, which provides a context in which problems of exclusion and interpretation which arise in the maintenance of the tradition can be solved. When Björn nevertheless protests, Daniel makes the same point in an even more explicit way. By using resources from the medical tradition itself (stänga av droppet and aldrig sätta in droppet; shut off and never set in drip, respectively), Daniel emphasizes the non-exclusion of Björn. At the same time, he makes the unsayable in the tradition even more hearable, by providing another pair of clearly deliberate actions, in the format used by Arne.
Envoi
Through a repeated use of a certain method of turn construction, Arne, Björn, Clara, and Daniel have managed to construct within the ongoing social activity a complex network of relations between themselves and what is projected as an established distinction within a relevant tradition. Let us now see which linguistic resources emerge from this activity.
T
hreeAnd doing language
There’s a piece that was torn from the morning And it hangs in the gallery of frost
Leonard Cohen: Take this waltz
1. Arne: sen e ja eh: then am I eh
2. sen e där ju hela eutanasiproblemet sönderfaller ju som (p) then is there ju the-whole euthanasia problem falls-apart ju as
3. som ni vet i två begrepp nämligen aktiv å passiv eutanasi också ju.
as you know into two notions namely active and passive euthanasia also ju 4. Björn: jaha.
5. Clara: mm (p)
6. Björn: medveten å omedveten. (p) intended and unintended
In doing his turn in line 6, Björn uses, as I have already pointed out, Arne’s preceding turn as a resource, verbalizing only his own reformulation of Arne’s distinction and retaining, implicitly, the overall format of Arne’s turn. In diagraph format (Du Bois 2014), again:
1. Arne: sen e ja eh: sen e där ju
hela eutanasiproblemet… i två begrepp
aktiv å passiv eutanasi också ju. …
6. Björn: medveten å omedveten.(p)
Recycling with différance
This is a method of turn construction which I have called recycling with différance (Anward 2004). Différance is Derrida’s dynamic notion of difference (Derrida 1967, ch. 2, particularly p. 92), which emphasizes that differences are not just there to be used but are always (re)created at each instant of use.
Recycling with différance, which has been identified and described under various names in the literature: poetics of ordinary talk (Sacks 1992, Vol. II, Parts V and VI, Jefferson 1996), format tying (Goodwin & Goodwin 1987), repetition (Tannen 1989, Fant 2000, Blanche-Benveniste 2000), resonance (Du Bois 2014), and quotation (Gasparov 1998), is, as Sacks and Tannen emphasize, a poetic method. It fits nicely Riffaterre’s description of the method by which poetry is made: repeated transformation of a core expression (Riffaterre 1978, based on Jakobson 1960).
Basically, in recycling with différance, speakers model new turns on old turns, in such a way that one part of the old turn is kept (implicitly or explicitly), and a new expression substitutes for the other part of the old turn. Thus, each new recycling of an old turn also introduces a difference, or sets into play différance, in the sense of Derrida.
A construction
In offering a reformulation in support of Arne’s distinction by the method of recycling with différance, Björn is at the same time creating a construction. First of all, by modelling his turn on Arne’s previous turn, Björn is creating a resemblance between the two turns, of a kind which Bloomfield took as absolutely fundamental in his set of postulates for linguistics as a science: “Within certain communities successive utterances are alike or partly alike.” (Bloomfield (1966 [1926]: 26). Moreover, the resemblance created in this way is a working resemblance, put to a social use, in this case a potential alignment. As Douglas (1996) eloquently argues, following Goodman (1970), similarity comes cheap to any observer and needs, to have any descriptive value, to be secured in a demonstration of its practical relevance to participants. In this case, however, the resemblance is unproblematically part of a local communicative project1. Thus, the similarity between Björn’s turn and Arne’s turn is an achieved similarity, in Sacks’ sense (Sacks 1992, Vol. II, p. 4). Björn produces his turn in such a way that its similarity to Arne’s turn “will be seeable” (ibid.), and we are entitled to say that Björn, in doing his turn, effectively subsumes that turn and Arne’s turn under a common turn type, a recurring turn format with a recurring function – a linguistic sign, in other words , in an extended Saussurean sense (Chafe 1967, Langacker 1998).
Secondly, by making his turn parallel to a key part of Arne’s turn, and implicitly retaining the remainder of Arne’s turn, Björn, as we have already seen, effectively makes a proper analysis of Arne’s turn into two parts,
(hela eutanasiproblemet sönderfaller ju som ni vet i två begrepp nämligen
and aktiv å passiv eutanasi), and proposes a paradigmatic alternative to one of these parts. Thus, the turn type created through Björn’s turn is also, both formally and functionally, a combination of a constant part and a variable 1 For this notion, see Linell 2009, section 9.7.
part, as shown below. In other words, it is what Tomasello (2003: 117) calls an item-based construction. The semantic composition is straightforward: the constant part is predicated of the variable part.
1. Arne: …
hela eutanasiproblemet sönderfaller ju som (p) som ni vet i två begrepp
nämligen aktiv å passiv eutanasi
…
6. Björn: medveten å omedveten.
A problem
However, when Arne rather emphatically rejects Björn’s proposed reformulation of Arne’s distinction
6. Björn: medveten å omedveten. (p) intended and unintended
7. Arne: näej aktiv e de där förstår du att du helt enkelt slår ihjäl [folk.]
näej active is that you see that you simply kill people 8. Clara: [gör] fel. ((skrattar))
do wrong
9. Arne: på ett eller annat sätt [passiv e bara att du skiter i dom] in one or another way passive is only that you don’t-care about them
we get into trouble. The repartee by Arne makes what would otherwise seem to be a straightforward move at this point, namely the subsumption of the two turns under a context-free construction, such as
hela eutanasiproblemet aktiv å passiv eutanasi sönderfaller ju som (p) medveten å omedveten
som ni vet i två begrepp
quite problematic.
What the context-free representation of the turns says is that the alternatives of the middle paradigm are of equal status. However, this is far from true, as we have already seen. Remember that the very point of the sequence we have been looking at is to establish the distinction between active and passive euthanasia and relegate the distinction between intended and unintended euthanasia to the realm of the unsayable, in the sense of Wittgenstein (1922), that which it makes no sense to affirm or deny of euthanasia. Of course, we could try to annotate the construction on this point, but that would really amount to somehow incorporate the full sequential contexts of the paradigmatic alternatives into the construction. A notational variant, at best.
An exemplar model
Many linguists find it natural to assume that concrete turns are dissolved in memory, leaving only a residue of general patterns, from which new turns can be formed; thus projecting the grammarian’s decontextualising practices of collecting and sorting (Harris 1980) onto everyday languaging.
However, as we have just seen, in such a process of dissolution, information would be lost which is absolutely vital to the way recurrent patterns can be further used. To be able to use experienced turns as models for new turns, participants can not let them dissolve into abstract patterns, but must have access to them as fully detailed exemplar turns, in their sequential and social contexts.
This means that linguistic competence can not be regarded as something extracted from our linguistic practices. Rather, it is precisely the sum of these practices, of situated conversations and texts, which constitutes our linguistic competence (Hopper 1987, 1998, Becker 1995, Gasparov 1997, Jusczyk 1997, Bod 1998, Anward & Lindblom 1999, Barlow and Kemmer 2000, Anward 2004).
Thus, when I wrote a while ago that Björn, in offering a reformulation in support of Arne’s distinction, is also at the same time creating a construction, we should not take this to mean that the construction so created is somehow absorbing the exemplar turns on which it is based. Rather, Björn’s act of recycling with différance Arne’s turn in doing his turn makes available a possible articulation of these two turns into parts, and this articulation can then serve as a resource for the creation of further turns. A construction, when observed in its natural habitat, conversation, is one possible articulation of a temporally evolving series of turns.
Another construction
In lines 7 and 9, repeated below,
7. Arne: näej aktiv e de där förstår du att du helt enkelt slår ihjäl [folk.]
näej active is that you see that you simply kill people 8. Clara: [gör] fel. ((skrattar))
do wrong
9. Arne: på ett eller annat sätt [passiv e bara att du skiter i dom] in one or another way passive is only that you don’t care about them
a construction is also created, but in a different way.
In line 5, as we saw, Björn made a proper analysis of lines 2 and 3 into two parts, and proposed a paradigmatic alternative to one of these parts. This mode of recycling with différance might be called paradigmatic expansion2 (Anward 2000). It corresponds closely to Daneš’s second mode of textual progression (Daneš 1974), where a recurrent theme (T) is combined with a succession of rhemes (R):
2 Expansion refers to the effect on the linguistic resources emerging from a particular interaction.
T1
->
R2
T1
->
R3
Note that it is precisely this mode of recycling with différance, where the overall format of an old turn is retained, and a new expression substitutes for a part of the old turn, which makes series of a turns articulable as a construction. As I will show below, in chapter 5, a constant overall format typically indicates a common ongoing activity, like describing or defining. Thus, the hallmark of constructions, a constant part and a variable part, emerges quite naturally from a series of individual contributions to a common activity.
In lines 7 and 9, Arne uses another mode of recycling with différance, which we might call syntagmatic expansion (Anward 2000), and which corresponds to Daneš’s first mode of textual progression, where a rheme is made into a following theme and then combined with a new rheme:
T1 -> R2
T2 -> R3
In this mode of recycling with différance, something is added to a previous turn or turn part, and the addition does not form a paradigmatic alternative to any part of that to which it is added. In lines 7 and 9, Arne uses Björn’s proper analysis of his own first turn, recycles one part of that turn, aktiv å passiv, and expands it into a full turn. In fact, he does this in two steps, first expanding aktiv, and then passiv, using the same basic format in both cases. By modelling his expansion of passiv on the expansion of aktiv, he also makes a proper analysis of these expansions into the parts shown below. Note also that Clara, in her supporting turn in line 8, contributes a paradigmatic expansion of one of these parts.
(5) Recycling of aktiv å passiv
Arne: aktiv å passiv …
Arne: aktiv e dedär att du helt enkelt slår ihjäl folk
Clara: gör fel
Arne: passiv e bara att du skiter i dom
The highly articulated turn in lines 7 and 9 potentially lends itself to many further recyclings. As the conversation continues, one such possibility is explored. As we have seen, after Clara’s feedback in line 11, Björn’s mild protest in line 12, and Arne’s proposed wrapping up of the discussion in line 13, Daniel offers further support for Arne, by producing, in lines 14 and 15, his own variation on Arne’s definition of the distinction.
10. Björn: [( ) ja 11. Clara: ja
12. Björn: a ja jo [men
13. Arne: [så de å de e även där e de ju väldit mycke, so it and it is even there is it ju very much
14. Daniel: de aktiva e att stänga droppe. (p) the active is to shut off the drip
15. de passiva att aldrig sätta (.) [in droppe.] the passive is to never set in the drip
Daniel aligns with Arne by recycling, with some minor variations of his own, the entire complex format of Arne’s second turn, and making a paradigmatic expansion in each of its two major parts. Thereby, the already established articulation of this turn is reinforced, as shown below.
{
{
{
{
{
{
{
}
(6) Recycling of aktiv å passiv, 2
Arne: aktiv å passiv …
Arne: aktiv e dedär att du helt enkelt slår ihjäl folk
Clara: gör fel
Arne: passiv e bara att du skiter i dom Daniel: de aktiva e att stänga droppe Daniel: de passiva att aldrig
sätta in droppe
This network of turns potentially supports more compact constructions. To begin with, it supports the complex construction shown below, which stays fairly close to the actual turns on which it is based.3
aktiv e att du helt enkelt slår ihjäl folk. de aktiva gör fel.
att stänga droppe. passiv e att du skiter i dom]
de passiva att aldrig sätta (.) in droppe.
It also supports the following more abstract construction.
aktiv e att du helt enkelt slår ihjäl folk. de aktiva gör fel. ((laughs))
passiv stänga droppe. de passiva
skiter i dom
aldrig sätta (.) in droppe.
In the first case, the semantic composition is something like A ⊃ E and P ⊃ E', where A and P are sets of active and passive euthanasia events, respectively, and E and E' are sets of concrete formulated events, e.g. gör 3 I have omitted de där förstår du and bara, for the sake of simplicity.
fel ‘do wrong’, stänga droppe ‘to shut off the drip’, skiter i dem ‘don’t care about them’. In the second case, the semantic composition is something like A ∪ P ⊃ E ∪ E'.
However, a crucial point of the sequence is lost in these abstract representations, namely that the events that make up E and E' are designed precisely to undermine turn 6, by being deliberate events - first on a general level, in turn 7,9, and then on a more specific level, in turn 14-15. Again, we have a case where the full sequential contexts of the paradigmatic alternatives crucially determine their further use.
The second, and most abstract of the two constructions in addition allows for combinations that actually contradict what is arrived at during the sequence, for example that passive euthanasia is that you kill people. Being able to say also what is ’wrong’ is of course a pervasive trait of human language, but in this case it is precisely the distinction between wrong and right, determinable from the full sequential contexts of the paradigmatic alternatives, which disappears in the construction format.
Interim summary
We arrive again at the conclusion that a construction never substitutes for or absorbs a series of fully specified exemplar turns, but is a socially negotiated interim structuring of a series of turns, potentially open to new modifications. Since activities can be continued or reintroduced, the possibility for a next contribution must always be there. Any interim structuring of a series of turns is, as we have seen, a potential resource for further conversation. Thus are corroborated both Hopper’s original contention that constructions are always emerging and open-ended, embedded in, and ’dispersed’ across longer conversational stretches (Hopper 1987, 1998, 2011; see also Couper-Kuhlen & Thompson 2006), and Auer & Pfänder’s extended argument that such dispersed constructions nevertheless serve as powerful resources for
further conversation (Auer & Pfänder 2011; see also Couper-Kuhlen & Thompson 2006, Pekarek 2011, and Günthner 2006, 2011, among others).
But the productivity of a particular structuring of a series of turns, a potential construction, is not primarily a linguistic question, but basically a social question, as we have also seen. Rule-governed creativity, so central to Chomsky’s notion of linguistic competence (Chomsky 1964: 22-23), is socially circumscribed.4
F
OurAn emergent and dynamic system
The piece of conversation we have been looking at does not dissolve into abstract patterns, then, but remains accessible to its participants as a resource for future conversations - as a network of differentially voiced and authored turns, which are structured along the dimensions of se-quence and similarity.
One possible version of this network is shown in (1).1
1 Similarity is of course a multidimensional phenomenon, which can only partially be represented on a two-dimensional page.
Arne: sen e ja eh: (1) Aktiv å passiv sen e där ju hela eutanas iproblemet sönderfaller ju som (p) som ni v et i två begr epp nämligen aktiv å p as si v eutanasi också ju. Björn: jaha. Clara: mm (p) Björn: m edveten å om edveten. (p) Arne: näej aktiv e de där förstår du att du helt enkelt slår ihj äl [folk.] Clara: [ gö r] f el. ((laughs)) Ar ne : på ett eller annat sätt [passiv e bara att du sk iter i dom] Björn: [(. ..) jaa
Clara: ja Björn: ja ja jo [men Arne: [så de å de e även
där e de ju väldigt mycke,
Daniel: de aktiva e att st
änga droppe. (p)
de passiva att aldrig sätta (.) [
in droppe]
Arne:
[j
us
t
precis de.] Clara: jaha just de ja [mm Arne:
[j
us
t
precis de.
A system
The network in (1) is structured towards a language, or langue in a slightly modified Saussurean sense, that is, as a system of relations between turns and turn parts (Saussure 1916, particularly ch. 4, Culler 1986). Relations of sequence translate straightforwardly into syntagmatic relations, and relations of similarity translate into associative relations, and, sometimes, paradigmatic relations.
Associative relations, relations of similarity, in form and/or meaning, are the system-defining relations introduced by Saussure (1916 [1967]: 170-175) alongside syntagmatic relations. Paradigmatic relations, i.e. relations between units which are alternatives in a single sequential position (Hjelmslev 1963: 36), were only introduced by Hjelmslev and other later structuralists. These structuralists also proposed to do away with associative relations, thus paving the way for the classical Jakobsonian conception of language as a system of systems, structured along an axis of combination (syntagmatic relations) and an axis of selection (paradigmatic relations; Jakobson 1956). However, both types of relation capture essential features of conversational structure.
Paradigms in Hjelmslev’s and Jakobson’s sense2 arise in the context of particular conversational practices. One such practice is the supporting reformulations we have observed in Aktiv å passiv. Other such practices, to which we will return, are repair, reformulations, and successive responses to dispreferred responses. In all these cases, participants are not just doing similarity, they are also doing selection, trying out alternatives. In other contexts, similarity is not accompanied by selection. In fact, most cases of recycling in conversation described in the literature, beginning with Sacks (1992) and Jefferson (1996), are of this type. Thus, associative and paradigmatic relations are at least partially independent relations which both structure conversation and language.
2 Note that members of a traditional paradigm, e.g. a noun paradigm, need not be paradigmatically related.
An emergent system
The system in (1) emerges from conversation in the classical sense of emergence (Holland 1998, particularly ch. 7), where repetition of an action, in this case turn construction, produces a pattern which the action itself does not produce.
However, as Dahl (2004: 27-39) points out, there is no reason why emergence should be understood as merely an unintended consequence of something else.3 We have every reason to assume that conversationalists in doing conversation are also cultivating a medium in which, and often only there, certain social activities become possible.
Indeed, I have argued that the emerging system is not just produced but is deliberately done, that the sequences and similarities which constitute the system are achieved sequences and similarities, in Sacks’ sense.4 In other words, they are meant to be heard, and can fulfill their interactive functions only if they are heard. Arne, Björn, Clara, and Daniel are not just doing conversation, they are doing (achieving) language.
A dynamic system
And the system is also, as we have seen, a dynamic system, changing with every turn. The dynamic character of langue was recognized already by Karcevski (1929), in an interpretation of Saussure which unfortunately never became the standard one (but see Anward 1996, and Marková 2003: 76-78).
Saussure (1916 [1967]: 37) saw clearly the dynamic interplay between parole (practice) and langue (system):
“la langue est nécessaire pour que la parole soit intelligible et produise tous ses effets ; mais celle-ci est nécessaire pour que la langue s’établisse ; 4 See in particular Sacks 1992, Vol. II, Part I, Lecture 1, and Part IV, Lecture 1.
historiquement, le fait de parole précède toujours.”
But it was Karcevski who, by focussing on practice rather than the system, pointed out that a linguistic system must be flexible enough to be adaptible to the exigencies of any new communicative action (and all upcoming communicative contexts are new), and that in adapting to a new context, the system necessarily changes. A verbal action is thus, as we have seen, both system-dependent and system-changing. New practice transforms the system-so-far, and the system-so-far acts as a resource for and a constraint on further practice.
Much later, essentially the same point was made by Derrida, in his critical reading of Saussure (Derrida 1967, ch. 2), which is why I have used his notion of différance, and by Giddens (1984), in his theory of structuration.
F
iveOf formats, stance, and rhemes
Having argued that an embedded and dynamic system of linguistic resources emerges from a turn design oriented to situating participants in a tradition, I will now use another sequence from the conversation we are following to further explore how turns are structured by recycling with différance. In this case, the participants orient to the room in which the conversations take place.
Oskyldig
About five more minutes into the planning session, Arne spots a map on the wall of the room they have borrowed, and almost seamlessly changes the topic of the conversation, right then the social dimensions of euthanasia, and starts talking about the map. The other participants join him in trying to figure out what they are looking at. This goes on for a couple of minutes, until the nature of the map has been satisfactorily identified. After that, the map is not further mentioned.
(1) Oskyldig
1. Arne: ·hhh de där e minsann tillåme sionistisk propaganda. that is minsann even Zionist propagande
2. Daniel: ((MUTTERING)) 3. Björn: °( ) där° (p) jaså there jaså 4. X: ((LAUGHTER)) 5. Björn: de e inte turistartat? it is not a-tourist-thing 6. Arne: näej absolut inte.
näej absolutely not 7. Björn: de e de inte nähä.
that is it not nähä
8. Arne: undrar var iallsindar han fått tag i den. wonder where iallsindar he got hold of that
9. Daniel: titta där de e liksom slag, look there there are like battles 10. Arne: hel:a faderullan.
the-whole faderullan 11. Daniel: Israel air-strikes,1 12. Clara: jaha.
13. Daniel: de e luftslage va. it is the air-battle isn’t-it 14. Arne: de va katten,
that was katten
15. de e tydligen ifrån israeliska propagandaministeriet it is apparently from the-Israeli the-ministry-of-propaganda
